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Portraits of my Starbird ancestors hang on our wall on the landing at the top of the staircase. Over the years I have chained the family back from Martha Jane (Starbird) Richmond (1836-1905) to Robert Starbird (1782- ) to Moses Starbird (1743-1815) to John Starbird (1701-1753) to Thomas Starbird (1660-1723).

Photo: Starbird family. Source: Thomas Jay Kemp.

All of them lived in Dover, New Hampshire, at some time in their lives, and by the 19th century several of the Starbird lines were living in Gray, Maine.

Looking in the deep Historical Newspaper Archives of GenealogyBank, I can quickly find multiple Starbird articles from across centuries of American history.

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For example, here is a probate notice regarding Catharine Starbird, widow of Moses Starbird, published in 1838.

Portland Weekly Advertiser (Portland, Maine), 1 May 1838, page 1

Here is an article about John Starbird (1742-1802), who served in the Continental Army. Both he and his brother (my ancestor) Moses Starbird (1743-1815) fought at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

What? There was only one “Starbird” birth in all of England, going all the way back to 1837?

How could that be?

Looking deeper into GenealogyBank, I found this old obituary notice.

Weekly Eastern Argus (Portland, Maine), 26 April 1805, page

This is for a son of John “Starboard” from Gray, Maine.
Oh—that’s it.
The name could have been spelled “Starbird” or “Starboard.”

When I think of it—I pronounce both words exactly the same way.

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So—let’s do a quick double-check in the FamilySearch index to British birth records with this new spelling.

This time the search results were zero.

Zero “Starboard” births and only one “Starbird” birth—what is going on here?

I can find a ton of “Starbird” references in America but none in Britain.
Is there another spelling of the surname?

I have seen where some genealogists have suggested that Thomas Starbird (1660-1723) of Dover, New Hampshire, was the son of Edward Starbuck (1604-1690) who was also from Dover.

Would Thomas really have changed his name from Starbuck to Starbird?

Alfred A. Starbird, author of Genealogy of the Starbird-Starbard Family (Burlington, Vermont: The Lane Press), looked at this—especially since another Starbird historian said that Thomas Starbird had changed his name from Starbuck—but concluded “nothing has been found to support this claim.”

The title of his book gives us another variant spelling of this surname: “Starbard.” So, I tried that spelling in the FamilySearch—again zero references.

So—what about the spelling “Starbuck”?
I repeated the search, and that spelling produced over 5,000 English birth records.

Is it that simple—Thomas simply changed his name from Starbuck to Starbird?
Would that be a logical name change?
Is there another explanation?

Have any of our readers found a record proving who the parents of Thomas Starbird (1660-1723) of Dover, New Hampshire, were? If so, I would like to know.

Do you know any current men named Starbird or Starbuck who are willing to take a DNA test? That might be the only way we find the answer to this question.

So many reports of very young children dying early deaths in this old newspaper article:

Martha Banks, aged 1 year, 11 months and 2 days

Arthur Lincoln Vaughan, aged 6 months and 12 days

Caroline E. Hein, aged 11 months and 13 days

August 1875 was clearly a brutal month for children and their families in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

It is so tragic that their lives ended at such a young age.

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It would be easy for this information to be lost, leaving these children’s short lives forgotten. It’s comforting to know that I can find these death records in GenealogyBank, knowing that these youngest members of the family will not be lost to the family history we are compiling—that their lives, though painfully short, are permanently recorded in the family tree.

Because newspaper editors were so good about including their age in years, months and days, it is easy to compute their dates of birth from the information contained in the death records.

Make every effort to find and document every person in your family tree.

I was born in New Hampshire and my family has lived there for the past 350+ years. I probably have a cousin in every town in the state. This is especially true in Sanbornton, New Hampshire—I don’t think I could throw a rock there in any direction and not hit a relative.

I quickly picked one from the list: Ellen (Sanborn) Merriam (1920-2010).

Tri-Town Transcript (Topsfield, Massachusetts), 23 April 2010

Here was a line that brought back memories:

Born in Laconia, N.H., she was the daughter of the late Howard W. and Elenora (Currier) Sanborn. She was raised on a rural farm in Sanbornton, N.H., and educated in Sanbornton and nearby Tilton. She loved animals especially horses, and was a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, earning her degree in Geology.

It immediately brought to mind days gone by in Sanbornton. She went to school there and lived on a rural farm. Wasn’t every home on a “rural farm” back then?

I could picture that farm: the potbellied stove in the kitchen; the snow; the view across the fields; the quiet, secure surroundings.

She attended UNH. My parents and grandparents all attended the University of New Hampshire. Some of my earliest memories are riding the back roads to Durham, New Hampshire, and seeing the University. Eating lunch along the river and getting those giant ice cream cones from the UNH Dairy.

She was “a long time member of the Maple Street Congregational Church.” When we lived in nearby Lower Gilmanton there was only one church—and of course it was a Congregational Church. It was an image you would see in every town.

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I looked at Ellen’s family history and, using multiple sources, I quickly found that her parents—Howard Weaver Sanborn (1887-1957) and Elenora B. Currier (1895-1985) along with her five brothers and sisters—all lived on a farm in Sanbornton. As did her grandparents John Brewer Sanborn (1849-1940) and Asenath Quimby (1850-1891).

Sanborns had lived in Sanbornton since its founding in 1770.

Our family still owns the farm that my 5th-great-grandfather William Huse (1760-1839) purchased when he settled there after the Revolutionary War to raise his family.

I doubt I ever met Ellen Louise (Sanborn) Merriam, but by reading her obituary it feels like I’ve known her all my life.

I like to find Sanbornton obituaries so that I can document every cousin in my family tree.

Genealogy Tip: Don’t only search for specific relatives in GenealogyBank—search for the small towns where your ancestors lived. You just might discover a cousin you’ve never met before.

Note: FamilySearch International (FamilySearch.org) and GenealogyBank recently announced an agreement to make over a billion records from historical obituaries searchable online. The tremendous undertaking will make a billion records from over 100 million U.S. newspaper obituaries readily searchable online. The newspapers are from all 50 states and cover the period 1730 to the present. Find out more about our partnership at: http://www.genealogybank.com/family-search/

Genealogy Search Tip: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. GenealogyBank’s search page includes an “Added Since” feature with a drop-down menu that lets you search on content added in the past one, two or three months.

Last year I wrote about my relative Elizabeth (Meader) Hanson (1684-1737) who, along with her children, was kidnapped by Abenaki Indians on 7 September 1724 and taken to the Indians’ village along the St. Francis River in Canada. They were held there for over two years. (See: Find & Preserve Your Family’s Stories.)

Powerful. Memorable. That story has been told and retold in our family for the past 290 years. Every night when we were young we asked our grandfather to tell us that story. We loved it. It was real—it was our family story.

Indian Raids Continued

Recently I found this 1749 newspaper article with a report from Timothy Brown about his attempts to learn more about—and to free—captives still held by the Indians.

He was able to get in and around the Abenaki village and learned about multiple captives, including this specific reference:

There is also a Boy who was taken from Rochester in New Hampshire, with the Indians at St. Francois, his Name is Jonathan Dore.

Boston Post Boy (Boston, Massachusetts), 10 July 1749, page 2

Jonathan Dore?
Rochester, New Hampshire?
St. Francis Indians?

This is sounding just like the story of my relative Elizabeth Hanson, who was also taken prisoner by the Abenaki Indians from St. Francis.

This Jonathan Dore has to be one of my relatives, too—the same Jonathan Dore who was my 5th-great uncle.

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New England Had Had Enough

The Abenaki and the French were taking American women and children captive so that they could sell them back to their families.

It was time to stop these atrocities—and that was one of the reasons the French & Indian War was launched (1754-1763).

Attack on Fort William Henry

During the war there was an attack on Fort William Henry in August of 1757.

The following account comes from Terror in Rochester by Linda Sargent, 2008:

“The fort was manned by the British, including many New Hampshire men. The siege had ended and the British had surrendered the fort to the French who were being aided by the Indians. There are various accounts of what happened next, but British soldiers were massacred after they had surrendered.

“One man who managed to escape from the fort was from Dover, NH. When he returned to Dover, he told how he had been pursued by Indians. One of them had caught up to him and lifted his tomahawk.

“When their eyes met, under the war paint and Indian dress he recognized the eyes of a young boy he had known well when he worked as a teamster logging on the Salmon Falls River and visiting at the Dore’s home in Rochester. He knew this white Indian was Jonathan Dore. Jonathan recognized him, as well, and dropped his tomahawk to his side and left. No one believed the man’s story when he returned to Dover.”

“Rogers and about 140 men entered the village, which was reportedly occupied primarily by women, children, and the elderly, early that morning, slaughtered many of the inhabitants where they lay, shot down many who attempted to flee, and then burned the village. Rogers and his men endured significant hardships to reach the village from the British base at Fort Crown Point in present-day New York, and even more hardship afterwards. Chased by the French and vengeful Indians, and short on rations, Rogers and his men returned to Crown Point via the Connecticut River valley.”

Jonathan Dore Witnessed Rogers’ Attack on the Abenaki Village

Digging deeper into GenealogyBank’s archives, I found out more of the story.

Aberdeen Daily News (Aberdeen, South Dakota), 5 January 1905, page 2

The above historical newspaper clipping is only part of the long account about Jonathan Dore that appeared in the Aberdeen Daily News. The whole article gives a good overview of what had happened to Jonathan Dore.

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According to the article, Jonathan Dore (1734-1797)—my 5th-great uncle—was kidnapped on “Salmon Falls Road in Rochester [New Hampshire]” by the Abenaki on 26 June 1746, when he was only 12 years old!

Jonathan Dore married an Abenaki Indian woman and they had two children. When Major Robert Rogers attacked their village in 1759 to avenge the attack on Fort William Henry, Jonathan Dore “witnessed the massacre.”

Everyone in the village was killed and it was set on fire. “Among the ruins he found the bodies of his wife and children. He buried them in one grave and with them his attachment to the Indians.”

In 1760 Jonathan Dore returned home to Rochester, New Hampshire. His family had moved across the Salmon Falls River to Lebanon, Maine, where he also settled.

The newspaper article concluded:

He settled in Lebanon, Me., married again and spent there the remainder of his days, famous for his marksmanship, especially with the bow and arrow, and known to every one as “Indian Dore.”

Wow—we would have loved to have heard that family story as kids!

Our “uncle” was not much older than we were when he was captured by the Indians, and then held captive for over 13 years—what a great story.

Preserve your family’s stories.

Find them in the old newspapers in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives—preserve those stories and pass them down to the rising generation.

Most genealogists use newspaper birth notices, marriage announcements, and obituaries in their family history research—but there are many other good sources of family information in newspapers, such as tax lists.

For example, the town of Tamworth, New Hampshire, took out this ad in the Sun (Dover, New Hampshire), an area newspaper, in 1816. It was an advertisement to publish their local real estate tax list as a public notice that taxes were due, who the taxpayers were and how much each person owed. In addition to all that, this list describes the property owned and the buildings thereon.

The dimensions of each home are given, and we are told if each family had a barn or other out buildings on their property.

John Ames’ home was 21’ x 26’ and he had a barn, all on 73 acres of land.

Andrew Brier had 30 acres of land, a 15’ x 16’ home and a barn.

Isaac Medar had 100 acres of land, a 30’ x 40’ home and a barn.

You can quickly get a sense that they lived a rural life there in Tamworth. They lived on large parcels of land. We know how big the homes were. We can see whether or not they had a barn or other buildings on the property. Notice too that both men and women are listed as land owners.

Every landowner in the town is listed.

The list of property owners is so long it is printed on pages 3 and 4.

Bottom Line: These published tax lists are an extra census of the town, with the bonus that it describes each home, other buildings and acreage owned.

Long-established American families have family trees that stretch back to the Colonial Era in the 17th and 18th centuries, before the United States became an independent country. Finding vital statistics and other genealogical information about these early Colonial ancestors from that time period can be difficult, as some vital records simply were not officially kept before and during the 1700s, or have been destroyed through war, accident or the passage of time.

Illustration: 1754 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urging the British Colonies in North America to join together to help the British win the French and Indian War (the segment labeled “N.E.” stands for the four New England colonies). Credit: U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fortunately, GenealogyBank offers a rich genealogy resource for family historians tracing their family trees back to American Colonial times: an online collection of 27 Colonial newspapers, providing obituaries, birth notices, marriage announcements, and personal stories to get to know your pioneering ancestors and the times they lived in better.

Discover a variety of historical genealogy records and news stories in these 27 Colonial newspapers, listed alphabetically by state and then city. Each historical newspaper title in this list is an active link that will take you directly to that paper’s search page, where you can begin researching for your Colonial ancestry by ancestors’ surnames, dates, keywords and more.

Download our printable PDF list of Colonial newspapers for easy access to our historical archives right from your local desktop. Click the newspaper titles to be taken directly to the search landing page for that publication. Just click on the list below to start your download.

Feel free to embed our list of 1700s newspapers on your website or blog using the code below. Simply cut, paste and presto! You can easily share this fantastic collection for early American ancestry research with your visitors.

I encourage you to plant new family trees every month in this New Year.

Credit: Wikipedia

Like you, growing my family tree and documenting each person in it keeps me busy. More and more information is constantly going online for us to search and add to our family histories. For example, every week GenealogyBank adds millions of additional records including obituaries, birth notices, marriage announcements and other useful articles.

My family tree easily has over 20,000 different names. As I find obituaries for others with the same surnames I am working on, it is interesting for me to see if that person is related to my family.

I take that information and plant it on several of the online family tree sites, putting all of my research notes and links online. This makes it easy for me to navigate my sprouting forest of family trees so that I can quickly refer back to them.

In time I can see if any name on these growing sprouts is related to me or not. Having all of the information online also allows other researchers on the same family lines to collaborate by adding to and documenting these lines with sources and photographs. It is essential that we put everything we can online. I limit this to only the deceased members of my family tree, and do not put information about my living relatives online in order to protect their privacy.

Perhaps a certain “Kemp” I found is a relative or not. As I chain back in time the number of individuals and surnames double and double again and again. While this person might not be related to me at first glance, by looking deeper I might find that this person is a cousin through another side of the family tree.

This is especially true in smaller geographic areas. For example, I have found that today I am related to almost everyone that lived in pre-1820 eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire. While they were not all related at that time, adding in the generations over the past 200 years has multiplied the odds that there is now a direct relationship to all of them today on my family tree.

By taking the time to organize, document and sprout mini-family trees online, I increase the odds of my linking up all of my extended family members over time.

Play it forward and plant more family trees online throughout the year. It will benefit you and all of your genealogy colleagues.

There was no television in New Hampshire in those days, but my grandfather remembered the family stories and passed them down.

Credit: Wikipedia & Internet Archive

As kids there was one particular story we always wanted to hear every night: the story of when Indians attacked the family cabin in 1724. This story has been passed down in the family for almost 290 years!

I wondered if there was a contemporary account of this in the old newspapers of the day. After a steady search, I found nothing about the attack on my ancestors’ cabin published in 18th century newspapers.

One hundred years after the attack occurred, an announcement about my ancestor Elizabeth Hanson’s story was published in the newspaper.

She had written about her ordeal, and eventually her personal account was finally published.

Credit: Internet Archive

I already knew about the story—but now I had a near-contemporary account and it was the same story that my grandfather told us, almost word for word. What a wonderful keepsake to have and pass down to keep her story alive!

Search the old newspapers and other online genealogy resources and get your family’s stories.

Every time I dive back into GenealogyBank’s newspapers I look for articles about my family. With over 1.4 billion records to select from—and more added every day—there are still a lot of family finds yet to be discovered.

Recently I was looking for more information in GenealogyBank about my ancestor Jeremy Hanson from Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

Since he lived in New Hampshire and “Jeremy” is a fairly unique name, I started by searching on just his first and last name—limiting my search to only New Hampshire and Massachusetts newspapers.

Finding My Ancestor’s Farm in the Newspaper

I soon found this real estate ad about a Jeremy Hanson who was selling his farm in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, in 1829.

Since many of my ancestor Jeremy Hanson’s children were born in Gilmanton, this old news article is probably about him.

The real estate ad says that his farm was “one mile south of the Academy…on the road that leads to Concord.”

Gilmanton Academy?

I drove past that Academy thousands of times growing up in New Hampshire.

Photo: Gilmanton Academy. Credit: Wikipedia.

“One mile south of the Academy…on the road that leads to Concord.” A quick Internet search can find that location.

Credit: Google Maps

So—now we know where his farm stood in 1829.

Look at some of the details provided in the old real estate ad:

135 acres of “good land”

80 acres are divided into mowing fields, pasture and tillage land

I recognize that type of division.

Our property when I was growing up was further south of where Jeremy’s farm was located, closer to the intersection of State Routes 107 and 129. We had fields that had been planted and mowed since the days of the Revolutionary War. No doubt the Mudgett family that owned our property in days gone by knew Jeremy Hanson back in the day.

There are more details in the historical ad:

“Good orchards that make 15 barrels of cider yearly”—so they must have loved their homemade cider

“A well of never failing water”—sounds terrific. It’s good to see the ad copy used by people selling a home in 1829. He didn’t just have a well, he had “A well of never failing water.”

A home that was a 30’x40’ one-story house

A “well finished barn 22 x 49, sound and good”

We can picture exactly how big these two buildings were.

There were also three more buildings on his property:

A “wood and corn house, 24 by 30 two stories”

A “shed 30 feet long”

And “one more out building 15 by 20”

This is impressive. Since I’ve walked these hills and farms for years, I can picture how Jeremy’s farm must have looked.

Finding My Ancestor’s Occupations in Newspapers

Looking at the other newspaper search result hits, I found this article about Jeremy Hanson, the town clerk in Lincoln, New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Patriot (Concord, New Hampshire), 21 April 1842, page 3

This fits: my records show that several of Jeremy’s children died in Lincoln, Grafton County, New Hampshire.

In another old newspaper article Jeremy is named as the tax collector.